It appears that the virtual world can be just as pricey as reality if you want to have the very best in Second Life. Linden Lab, developer of the extremely popular MMO, has released specific information regarding in-game sales figures, stating that gamers have spent over $1 billion in “digital goods”.

But Linden Lab didn’t stop there; the developer also claimed that their title has “the largest virtual economy in the industry”, and that they are seeing $50 million every month in user-to-user spending.

The Second Life creators also mentioned some other interesting statistics:

“• Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day — from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators and more. There are now more than 270 terabytes of content in Second Life, and this is growing by approximately 100% every year.

• More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used in Second Life since voice was introduced in 2007. Voice minutes grew 44% year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, and more than 6 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in 2009 alone, making Linden Lab a major VoIP provider.

• Approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second in Second Life, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. Roughly 60% of active Second Life Residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries, and the Second Life Viewer is available in 10 languages.

• The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately 2 billion square meters — roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Land in Second Life has grown roughly 18% since Q1 2009 and approximately 75% since Q1 2008. As the creator and original seller of all virtual land in Second Life, Linden Lab is not only the provider of the world’s largest platform for user-generated virtual goods, but is also a leading virtual goods vendor itself.”